Murder at the Bike Shop | Sidebar Q&A

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For everything in vaccination. Now the cost of testing is on choppy fry.de. It's almost over the stove. The stove is also on top of the stove. And then the stove is on top of the stove.

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The stove is on top of the stove. Or on top of the stove. Really? I don't know how to use it. The stove is ready.

Save. With this stove. Hello and welcome to this week's sidebar. You may have noticed there was no episode this week. We are taking your break, but we'll be back Monday or promise.

However, we're still here for a sidebar. I just didn't get in. Hey, Susan. Hey, Susan. And this week we are here to answer some of our questions.

So we thought it would be a good opportunity to go back through and answer some listener questions from throughout the season. Here's one that came in from an anonymous person.

“How did Earl accumulate multiple hordes of things if he did not leave the house?”

That was a great question and the answer is his teenage employees.

So the teenage employees that worked at the bike shop, most of them didn't do anything with bikes. Most of them were just like sent out to go collect stuff from Ali's to bring it back to the bike shop. Yeah, even Scott told a story. Scott didn't work there very long, but he told a story.

One of his jobs was just to go out and collect cardboard boxes. Oh, we're getting it. Four of the data boxes had been discarded. Earl burned always called it corrugated. Not cardboard and he was very particular about saving all the corrugated he could.

Yeah, that's just from another time. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So in times past Earl did go out. He must have gone out because he had a very large hoard of things beyond, like, you wouldn't find a dumpster.

But as by the 80s, he wasn't going anywhere and mostly collected came just from, you know, the kids he sent out to grab things.

Most stories I've heard about Earl leaving the shop because he basically never did.

It's only when like a kid came back with two little stuff from a dumpster. Once in a while he would go out to like a dumpster and check it himself. That's about it. Yeah, but not towards the end, I don't think. Not towards the very end, but yeah, a lot of stuff in there.

Yeah, which leads us to the next question from a listener whose handle is Brimmanco. Was there any information available about what happened to the buildings full of bikes and hoarder things? Were they torn down? Was it given away in auction? Just very curious. Another great question because I spent way too much time looking into this. I never came up with a show.

So he had seven buildings in all. This little area of sort of downtown Kalamazoo off of Harrison and East Michigan. And there was a whole drama, a whole saga where the city was trying to condemn a lot of these buildings because they probably honestly should have been condemned. And then mysteriously, a lot of them go down in arson right before they get torn down.

And that's never fully resolved.

I've talked to a couple of employees who were actually accused of doing the arson and who did not. But yeah, so there was a lot of bad feelings in the city. A lot of arguments that was over the years. In fact, there was a city in Spectre. It was a suspect purely because of this sort of conflict over the other buildings. However, they were full of stuff and not just junk.

They were full of bikes from literally 1800s, wooden bikes, bikes from the very earliest times of bikes. And we did hear from people who were involved in the auctioning off of them. And apparently they made some serious money because they were some collector's items and plastics in there that were just couldn't find anywhere else in the past days. So this war was actually very valuable if you knew who the buyers were.

Just into the jeep, have a wooden bike?

“Yeah, yeah, it's still out in my garage. If you want to borrow it, Kevin.”

Yes, thanks. And there's an interesting story with a Pina not going to be in the show, but so at some point, it's not clear exactly when it's not when Earl died. But some years, a couple of years before that, James Long, one of the bike shop employees, was actually living in one of the buildings

like the the ones that he without power, not no hookups, whatever reason he found himself out at home and was staying in these bike shops using candles for light. And we talked to an ex-employee who had the story of like being sent out by Earl to go collect stuff and build buildings. These two boys walk into this building and see this like ghost zombie, just like getting up from

The big shocker was, is me and Earl next was checking the houses and then the property and we

“seen a candle lit in one of the houses. I think it was a white one. We went in there and the shocker”

was, he set up out of bed and looked at us up like, jumped out the damn window and thirded running. He didn't know he was there. No, did Earl know he was there? No. Earl didn't know he was there. I don't believe so. What did Earl say? I don't, I went around with Earl next, not for a little burn. Oh, I don't, I seriously about shaped my pants and jumped out the window and started running. That's so funny. It was James. Yeah, it was James.

Now that you say James long, scraggly, long hair, yeah. He stayed in that house for a while. To your call, what James long was like at all? He worked there forever. He didn't have one. He worked there forever. He even taught me how to drive a stick. How that happened? He just decided to... Well, well, I worked there and then he said, "You want to, you want to go to the store?" Well, yeah, I go to the store. He goes up, I figured you had to drive.

He showed me how to drive the stick. Why was he taking you to the store? We were going to hurry so he could get some food. He had a car. He had a Honda. That was his boyfriend's car. Yeah, they hadn't expected to find anyone up there and they went up there and there was James. James was staying up there and they had no idea and it scared the shit out of him.

“And I think he said, they don't know if they told Earl, like they didn't know if Earl knew”

that James was sleeping up there. They just ran and lost their minds, but apparently Earl did know he was staying there. It's not well documented, but like he definitely... We know for a time anyway, James Long was living one of those outbuildings. And they're all gone now, all those buildings. Yes, they're all gone, including the bike shop. We went out there to visit the site where the bike shop was and walk around. There's nothing there. You know, it's just a grassy field now.

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So, pour yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with morning cup of murder. Find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we have another question from a listener named Kelly McCalum regarding the money bag Scott had in his possession, allegedly. Any chance those items were described in media covering the case at the time, or were they a holdback from police? Was any info held back for media that was

later substantiated by witnesses? So, for the bank bags, yes, they were mentioned in news articles, but actually, I tend to think Stacey was not aware of that. We can't know for sure, but my sense from the files and from her is that she personally was not aware of that being mentioned in the

news papers. However, they were mentioned. As we touched on in one episode, they actually first

reported that the money bag was found. It was checked and like was all accounted for. So, that mentioned was in there. And then we're not sure why, but every article after that. So, every article called for the very first one that went in the paper says that the money bag was stolen. They don't give a color. They don't talk about spice for either writing. They don't talk about the contents. All the details weren't there. And it certainly wasn't in her first statement.

Yeah, so even though that was public record, I don't think Stacey saw it for real, and her first statement does not mention it. Yeah, or any of the specifics of it. Yeah, but it is very strange, again,

the very first article in the local paper of the comments, because that literally explained

that they found the bank bag and had the exact contents that should have had. And yet, somehow, that just is by the next day in the paper, it's just totally forgotten. And they talk about

start of coal because, yeah, it was the theory that he stole it. He just got stolen. It was actually

there the whole time. Yeah, it makes no sense. Again, there's no place to file where they're clearly like they found the bag. They're counting up the money money in it. There's no type

“of report, but there is a, you know, just a handwritten notes about it. So it's, I think it's”

just a failure of process. Like they just had too many officers not reporting what was happening, and they lost track of shit. It's one of those terrible moments in cases like this, and terrible for Scott, where something like this sort of falls through the cracks. And then for the next several decades, everybody assumes that the bank bags were actually stolen. Yeah. And this is getting stuff we can't really prove exactly. But my suspicion or my sense from the

files is that it may have been known by some investigators on the coal case team that there were bank bags in the images. Like there's suggestions that knew that happened. I don't think they ever put together two and two, and realize those have to be the same bank bags that were supposedly stolen. I don't know. Like we can't read, we don't know for sure they subjectively knew. But it could just be that such tunnel vision that they assumed that the bank bags struggled

with those photos, we're not the ones specifically in the bike shop. Even though Karen and Dorlie had said those were the only ones. They said that back in 1988. By the time they're talked to in 2001, they don't clearly remember what they were. They couldn't identify exactly what the bank bags look like. You know, but they had said back then that they were the only ones. Yes. However, we do know that this coal case team for whatever reason seems to have a history of

our pattern of not talking to original investigators. Like in Jeff Titus's case, the coal case team did not involve the original investigators or like bullied briefing them. They were either not talked to it all or just very dismissively contacted. They were not considered like a resource to be used for the investigation. Which would seem to be, you know, important. Yeah. I would think it'd be important. So if they're not spending a lot of time with the old

case file with the old personnel, they're having these new interviews and they're assuming that's

fact and not realizing these people have forgotten mundane details that are critical and they don't

hear them themselves. Yeah. The picture of the bank bag right there. Yeah. That moment still breaks my heart and this whole story. Like it would be easy to miss stuff in that shop. I could almost totally see how you could have some bank bags tucked away and maybe visible in a photo and it's still hard to see. Now, even in the hoard, like these bank bags were front and center. It's almost like they were laid out there to split just so the crime scene person could take a photo of

them. Potentially? We have another question from a listener named Kristen who wrote in about the flowers on the grave. She says that my immediate reaction to the few days after the murder suggestion was surely they can have been a grave already to put flowers on. A body and a murder case surely can't be released in time and an arrangement for a burial all in a few days. So that timeline

“goes straight out the window in my book. Yes. Like he was buried, I think within five days. However,”

there were in fact flowers on his grave after his buried. Like there were nothing notable of flowers then because there were in fact a lot of flowers on the grave at that time. So it's only a year later that the flowers being placed there were even seemed noticeable. But yeah, like when he was freshly buried, there were flowers on the grave. So nothing but that would have stood out. There's nothing about it that would have connected Scott to the case. Unless you say that the

flowers were placed a year later and then you could hypothetically say that no one else could place the flowers there. Well, you know, as said in court, the flowers alone are evidence enough for me. Like there's all like there's flowers on the grave in several photos. Like I mean, obviously someone was putting flowers on the grave. Even after Scott's in prison, like flowers show up on the grave. So it's just a ridiculous idea to begin with.

Yeah. You put flowers on the grave. Or we somehow like involved in the murder now. Like it's just a

“it's an idea. Like a some poetical or like I think makes a big deal of it. But just even from the”

star, I make no sense. No, surely not evidence of a crime. Right. There were so many people who

had a story about the bike shop who had worked at the bike shop or who had bought their first bike

or given their first bike. It doesn't seem that strange to me that someone would just stop by and put flowers on your grave. And the flowers were placed in the middle of so Johnny and Earl, the brothers were buried together. And these flowers are placed like a little spot between the graves. So it's not even like necessarily focused at Earl. Our next question is from Alyssa and Ann Paula, who asks, "What would it take to get genetic

fingernails. There was DNA under both sets fingernails left in right hands and it belonged to

“the same unknown male. Unfortunately, it was a partial profile. So there's enough there where you can”

say, whoever this is, it's not Scott Baldwin. It's not Alan Nutter. But we can't use that to identify someone through genealogy. Like there's not enough of a prop out there to extrapolate beyond that.

If you have someone's known profile, you can compare against it and say, "It's not them" or

maybe it is them. But that's as far as it goes unfortunately.

“It starts getting into the realm of probabilistic genotyping.”

Not even. We're not even there. It's a, it's a pretty partial profile. It's enough to, you know,

exclude people. But it's not going to be enough to get you to, you know, track down timely trees.

To enough of a profile, you're saying, "seasonal, that if you ran, James Long's DNA against it, you could see." If you ran James Long's profile against that and it

“was not an exclusion, it would be highly interesting.”

Yeah. Okay, our final question is from Margaret, who is a librarian and true crime of Fistionado from Cincinnati who wrote in an asked, "I wanted to know what else you've uncovered about the rumors that Earl stashed a large sum of money in a shop. Has anyone you've talked to so far been able to produce hard evidence that there was a larger male of cash on the premises?" That's a good question.

In fact, the question of whether or not there was money hidden in the bike shop. That answer may or may not come from Earl and that are himself. But you'll have to tune in next week for episode 10 to find out. You've been listening to proof, sidebar, a podcast by Red Marble Media and Association with Glassbox Media. Send us your questions and comments at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere with the handle @proofcrimepod and on our website, proofcrimepod.com. Thanks so much for listening.